Just Keep Breathing
by XxOneTrueEnigmaxX
Summary: Jack "Frost" Overland was the rich jock everyone envied, despite his self-loathing. Rapunzel Gothel was the amazing artist everyone loved, but nobody knew. Merida DunBroch was the tough foreign student nobody messed with, who felt so alone. And Hiccup Haddock was the smart kid everyone abused. Four teens who wanted nothing to do with each other… until they all end up in detention.


**_**_Full Summary: Jack "Frost" Overland was the rich jock everyone envied, despite his self-loathing. Rapunzel Gothel was the amazing artist everyone loved, but nobody knew. Merida DunBroch was the tough foreign student nobody messed with, who felt so alone. And Hiccup Haddock was the smart kid everyone abused. Four teenagers who had gone through so many hardships, who had never even acknowledged each other's existence, find themselves stuck with each other in detention after a stunt that they unintentionally caused together. Never before had they wanted anything to do with each other, but as time passes by and they come to the realization that they are more similar to each other than they might think, they realize that they never knew what the true meaning of friendship was before... until now._**_**

**_Disclaimer: I do not own How To Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians, Tangled, Brave, or any other movie reference that appears in this story. Those belong to their respective owners._**

_-"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?"_

_~Mary Manin Morrissey_

_**Prologue: On That Day…**_

**_Hiccup Haddock_**

_Journal Entry 52_

_June 6, 2016_

_I had found it funny back then. How people could look at life and call it a roller coaster constantly going up and down at spontaneous moments. _

_I had found it funny that they could believed that as long as there are bad times in life, we can always expect the good times to come in unannounced. _

_I remember reading in a book, one that had not been well-reviewed by me, about a boy who described his life as a 'roller coaster that only goes up'. I thought it was ridiculous at first, and for a long time I had considered it so. _

_How could a roller coaster always go up?_

_If that's the case, then my roller coaster must've been built with faulty guide lines, because the only way it was heading, was down. _

_And it was frightening. Dreadful and horrid._

_My roller coaster had been going down for such a long time that I had honestly stopped believing that good things would happen. I began to accept that my life was built out of unhappiness as others thrived in seeing me miserable._

_I had felt that God made a mistake while creating me. That he had looked at me and wrote 'FAILURE' on me in big, red letters. Bloody letters carved deeply into my soul, marking my life and thrusting it into this constant downward spiral of misery._

_Sure, there had been hope in the beginning. This small flame on a candle that I had tried so hard to hold on to so it wouldn't blow out and leave me alone in the suffocating darkness. _

_But hope was completely squeezed out of me. My flame blew out and I was left alone in this never-ending black-hole that I could find no exit to._

_I had stopped hoping and praying. I had figured it was useless to keep holding on. _

_And as I had stared at the giant school building I so dreaded, yet yearned, to return to on that day, almost two years ago, I knew, even before the bell rang, I knew deep in my heart…_

_That I would not make it through the year._

_I had continually asked myself, 'Why the hell even try anymore?'_

_It's not like it would change anything. _

_My father would still hate me, my classmates would still push me to the edge and tease me about pushing me off the cliff, nobody would care, and by the end of the day I would still cry myself to sleep at night._

_Dark thoughts had begun infiltrating my mind. Whispering to me, and tempting me to take a deathly leap. To grab the dull knife from the dusty kitchen counter and make it spill blood over the dirt-ridden grey tiles till nothing but total darkness, and peace, consumed me. _

_That's all I wanted. Peace. And the only way to get it seemed to be by… not breathing._

_I didn't think I would survive the year. Didn't think that I'd live two more years to wear the graduation gown and cap upon my head and start a new, brighter life… leaving my old one behind._

_I just couldn't see that light at the end of the tunnel that led to a more happy place when my life was a complete and total disaster at that time. _

… _Until I met a group of people who lighted my path and guided me._

_People who listened to me, who saw me, who laughed with me, who cared about me._

_People who could understand me. Because just like me, they knew what it was like to be stuck in a self-loathing mind where we hurt ourselves just as much as others hurt us. They knew what it was like to feel as if the whole world was out to destroy your very existence simply for being alive._

_I never imagined I would meet people who genuinely… loved me._

_That word had become so foreign to me at that time, I had almost forgotten its meaning. But this small tingle of familiarity that came whenever the word was uttered or brought to my mind made me remember._

_There had been a time, a long time ago, when I had felt happy. It had almost been wiped out from my memory by the constant abuse, but it was brought back into my dark-ridden mind by the most unlikely group of friends._

_I still find it amazing. The way that a group of people can transition from being unaware of each other's existence, to almost killing each other in detention, to having decent talks with each other in the hallways, to laughing together on the same table during lunch, to taking care of a dog like a family…_

_And to calling each other best friends._

_I found people who wanted me to keep living. Who taught me that, no matter what we go through in life, through all the hardships and the pain, all we can do is just keep breathing, and those good times will come to us no matter how slowly they arrive. _

_These people, whom I had never acknowledged before, had become the world to me. _

_And I still can't believe it had started on that day, two years ago. _

_On that day…_

_August 25, 2014…_

_**End Prologue**_

**A/N: Hello readers! **

**Heh, So, I had told myself that I wouldn't bother with writing a new story because I wanted to concentrate solely on my other story, Arc of Fairies… what a big lie! But this idea started nudging my brain while I was reading a fantastic 'Big Four at Hogwarts' story and I just had to write it down and post it.**

**Now to explain this story, it will follow the viewpoints of all the Big Four characters in a modern AU, as written in each of their journals (though Merida, Jack, and Rapunzel will not get theirs just yet), but it will mostly follow from Hiccup's point of view. And yes, Toothless will appear as well, so don't worry.**

**This journal entry is not the first journal entry of the story though, just so you know. The first journal entry from Hiccup's viewpoint will be the first chapter which I will try to post by January.**

**This story was inspired by an original story that I'm writing in the future. One which is slightly similar to this one, but different in its own way. I figured this story might be good practice before I start writing my own story (that I'm senselessly hoping, WISHING, to get published in the future). ****Aaaaand, a little late-night watching Netlix might have been another factor in contributing to the creation of this fanfic. After all, who doesn't like the Breakfast Club? It still stands as one of my favorite movies of all time despite the fact that I wasn't even born in that era.**

**As for the 'Roller Coaster' reference, if any of you got where that came from, my opinions on the book do not match Hiccup's. That book was actually the first romance I ever read and genuinely liked. **

**The Big Four might also be a tiny bit OC (especially Hiccup) but other than that, you will find that they don't change much… that is, until I completely screw up their lives in later chapters like the sadist that I am. Mwahahahaha. **

**And if I have readers of my other story (Arc of Fairies) reading this new one, no my computer hasn't been fixed yet… sadly. I am writing this from my cousin's laptop who was kind enough to lend it to me. The good news though, is that I am going to write Chapter 4 in this same laptop so I can have it halfway done once I upload Chapter 3 of 'Arc of Fairies'.**

**Well, now that that's over, tell me what you thought of the Prologue! I am still trying to improve my writing skills, so any form of constructive criticism is well received. Just try to not be too harsh… I am really sensitive. And if you see any mistakes, go ahead and point them out, please.**

**Well this is a long A/N so I will end it now. Please, pardon my rambling.**

**Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and I also hope to see you guys again in my next chapter! \(^.^)/**


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